Pretty cool, right? Except Etemadieh isn't showing me how it
works; he's showing me how to hack into it. He places a smart
lock on the table, the kind you might find on a front door. He
says if he can hop onto your Wi-Fi, he can break into the hub.

"If I tell it true," he says as he's typing in the command on his
computer, "it'll lock the door."

Tell the computer "false," and it unlocks.

The hacker community is shining a spotlight on the Internet of
Things because, it says, a lot of manufacturers aren't taking
basic steps to secure their smart devices from other hackers.

Mark Stanislav is with Duo
Security. He says if hackers can break into one smart thing
in your home, they can potentially go after every other smart
device. He also says many companies are ignoring that risk.

"The type of company we see in the 'Internet of Things' right now
is a company that's crowdfunded or maybe one that's
Kickstarter-ing," Stanislav said. "So, [they] really don't have
any money for security testing."

Big manufacturers that can afford to take cybersecurity measures
are often lax, too, says Cameron Camp, a security researcher
at ESET. He says cybersecurity can add an extra layer
of work that risks turning off consumers.

"It's in the middle of the night, and you get up to get a snack,
now you have to type in a password," Camp says.

There's also the fact that in consumer electronics, it's all
about getting your TV or refrigerator to market first.
Cybersecurity adds time.

The hackers at Defcon say manufacturers are going to have to take
that time once consumers find out just how vulnerable they are.